Billionaire CEO Shawn Dunn has plenty of sex, power, and money. A woman turning down his advances? Unfathomable. Yet that’s what she does, again and again.

Kara Hayward is supposed to be off limits. Her sister is hiding from the dangerous assassin she escaped from, and it’s best for everyone if Shawn keeps his distance. Certainly as far as Kara is concerned. Shawn’s only after one thing and then he’ll walk away, just like her ex-husband.

But Shawn has larger desires and he’s used to getting what he wants. He doesn’t care if being together is dangerous. He doesn’t believe that threat to him, or his empire, is real. Right up to the night he has everything taken away.

Excerpt:

“You'll stay here where you're safe, until we have a plan.” Shawn stared at her as if waiting for an answer.

Was there any other option? She sighed. “Okay.”

She expected him to get up out of the bed, to go to the shower, but he continued to sit there like a lump.

“No, just treat me like you used to. I can't handle it when you come at me all... sideways.”

“Sideways?” he said, a small laugh escaping him. “Are we in combat?”

She scowled.

He exhaled and then gave her a large grin, and she could see it in his eyes. The game was back on. He finally moved, but it wasn't how she wanted it to go. He had on the smallest pair of boxer briefs she'd ever seen, and they clung to every inch of him.

“Want to take a closer look?” he asked, looping a finger under the waistband.

Guest Post:

Screenwriting vs. Novels

A quick background: I wrote screenplays for 15 years. I placed in contests, optioned the rights on a few, and wrote two on assignment for production companies. Nothing yet I’ve written has made it out of pre-production, though. I tried my hand at fiction and published two novels this year, with another set to release in April 2015.

The professions have a lot in common, besides the writer being the storyteller. You have to study others that are successful, read all the time, and practice your craft every day. You have to understand how to show and not tell. Be able to create characters that are believable and don’t all sound the same. Think about pacing, structure, and tension. Learn how to self-edit and revise ruthlessly.

And there are the same gatekeepers. You query agents and publishers/production companies exactly the same. You have to write a synopsis that boils the whole thing down to one page and almost kills you, and face rejection or silence in both careers.

The biggest difference between the two is that you are not allowed to have darlings in screenwriting. Like, any. In fact, once you sell the darn thing, you don’t have ownership over it. If they bring in another writer to “polish” your script, their name is added to the credits. Depending how much work they do, you may even lose “Written By” credit and be demoted to “Story By.” Keep in mind that these are characters that you created, saying and doing things you wrote. Once you sell, you sell it all.

Even before the sale, you may have to make changes to try to increase the chances of a sale. Perhaps casting wants to shop it to a 55-year-old actress when your script is about a new, young mom. (This actually happened to me.)

You also have no internal dialogue, which I consider both an advantage and a disadvantage. Showing a character struggling with a decision onscreen is much harder than having them think about it in a novel, but you don’t worry about boring your reader with internal dialogue in a screenplay.

Also, page count is king in screenwriting. It needs to meet a specific range of 85-120 pages, otherwise it will be rejected without being read, and depending on the genre, the window will narrow further. For example, romantic comedies should be 90-100 pages.

There’s more to learn about, such as formatting and tricks, in screenwriting versus novel writing. Unless you are exceptionally talented, I don’t think you can put out a decent script your first year of practice, but you can probably put out a decent novel with that amount of time. You have a huge advantage with novel writing… every novel you’ve ever read has been study!

Thanks so much for having me! Karyn Lawrence

Giveaway:

Karyn will be awarding a $25 gift card to Amazon, a signed paperback copy of both "Keep" and the first book in the stand-alone series, "Stay", bookmarks from "Stay" and a can kozie with the logo from the fictional beer company that the hero owns in "Keep" (Swag and print book are US only) to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Karyn Lawrence is an author, graphic designer, and screenwriter. She published a nonfiction book about color guard after an editor discovered her blog, way back in the infancy of the Internet and long before blogging was really a thing.

She has been a screenwriter for more than fifteen years, with rather mild success, and grew tired of her stories only reaching a handful of readers. The decision was made to try fiction in early 2013 and once she figured out how to write internal dialogue again, the prose came fast and furious. She most enjoys writing smexy (smart-sexy) books featuring a lovable SOB hero and a tough-as-nails heroine.

Karyn is a Chicago native who lives in Kentucky with her epic husband and two adorable sons.